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The darkest hour for Kevin Hartz came, as it did for many
entrepreneurs, amid the U.S. financial crisis in 2008. "It was a
gut-wrenching time," recalls Hartz, co-founder of Eventbrite, a six-year-old event
organization and ticketing platform. This bleak period would lead
to the first of many bright spots for his company -- now an
ecommerce
juggernaut in the ticketing industry.

In the past year, Eventbrite issued its 50 millionth ticket and
helped people in more than 175 countries to organize and join
events of all kinds, from cooking classes to business
conferences. Anyone can use the platform to create and promote an
event within minutes. Its founders describe Eventbrite as a
discovery engine for interesting events.

"We've always looked at ticketing as big sports and big
concerts," Hartz says, referring to both consumers and ticketing
companies. "But a ticket can be a ticket to a class, or a
fundraiser, or a political rally. We see it as a category-based
ecommerce company much like an eBay or an Amazon."

To date, Eventbrite has raised more than $78 million of venture
capital from Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital and others.

But back in 2008, when an institutional funding round fell
through, the company was scrambling for cash. Afraid of falling
too far into a financial hole, Hartz and his co-founders sunk
more of their own money into the business and went back to
investors such as Michael Birch, the co-founder of social network
Bebo, for additional capital.

"We put this money together and held our breath for 2009," says
Hartz, who serves as CEO. The other two co-founders are his wife
Julia, who is company president, and Renaud Visage, the company's
chief technology officer.

Despite thedownturn in the economy, the trio remained confident
that there was a mass market for their service. Their
determination paid off. In June, Eventbrite surpassed $1 billion
in total ticket sales since its founding, with a projected $600
million in tickets in 2012 alone. In exchange for its service,
the company takes 2.5 percent of total ticket sales plus $0.99
for each ticket. Integration with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
makes it easy to share notices of events, and the Eventbrite
mobile application allows organizers to scan tickets with their
cell phones.

"We're very much focused on the opportunity that Ticketmaster is
not focused on," says Tamara Mendelsohn, Eventbrite's vice
president of marketing, referring to an established competitor
that sells tickets for large events.

The average size of the events created through Eventbrite is
modest, about 40 attendees. However, some events are larger, such
as the Vans Warped Tour,
a traveling music and extreme-sports festival for which the
company exclusively handled the tickets for five stops this year.

"History is on our side," Kevin Hartz says. "Incumbents aren't
able to turn the corner and win in these new markets, as you can
see from Blockbuster or the bookstores like Borders, all this
wreckage of traditional businesses amid the disruption of
technological change."

But it was Eventbrite's commitment to customer service that
impressed Alex Kay, the founder of Unicorn Meat, a New
York-based nightlife production group, when he used the company
to handle tickets for his events. On one occasion, a company
error led to delayed payment for an event at a time when Kay
found himself between apartments and short on cash. Eventbrite
offered to make amends by providing him with a hotel room,
temporary storage space for his belongings and a moving company.
Although Kay didn't take the company up on its offer, the gesture
left a lasting impression.

"Ticketing is typically a shark industry, where anyone will
promise anything they possibly can to get you to sign a
contract," says Kay. "Eventbrite is an ethical player."

The company is poised for growth. Eventbrite's London office --
its first outside the U.S. -- represents the headquarters of a
coming European expansion. Already there are native-language
versions of the site for 14 countries, including Spain, Germany
and France.

"We think about how we can punch above our weight class," Kevin
Hartz says, "how we become the biggest ticketing company in the
world." One way is to tap into the zeitgeist, selling tickets for
the latest trend. In 2011, one of the largest growth categories
on Eventbrite was bacon-themed events.

"Because we built a technology platform that anyone can use, you
begin to see these really cool sociological trends emerge," says
Mendelsohn.

Current trends include outdoor adventure runs such as Tough Mudder and electronic-music
dance raves. In July, Eventbrite formed a partnership with
Disco Donnie
Presents, the event production company founded by Donnie
Estopinal, a popular party promoter in the music industry.
Estinopal's company produces more than 1,000 electronic-dance
music events each year, all of which are now ticketed through
Eventbrite.

More traditional growth categories are music festivals and
nonprofit fundraisers. In 2012, nonprofit organizations raised
$35 million for their events through Eventbrite ticket sales
alone, Mendelsohn says.